By Robert Willis

A long time ago — when I first started working at Drifters and still cared about that sort of thing — I invented a drink called Smoke on Ice. Nothing fancy, just a

By Julie Wornan

When the world was in its egg
Mother Gaia kept it warm.
Swirling tides of fantasy
Held it in charm.

When the pecking urge prevailed
In a

By Kanwar P. S. Plaha

Some debts are a matter of time.

PRESENT — BUREAU DESK, 2042

The holo-screen bleeds gray. The notice sits like an

By David Gianatasio

So, we're dead.

Looks like it.

This is the tunnel you hear about.

Guess so.

There's the light.

Dazzling.

Let's

By Ovidiu Bufnilă

Bobolina came from Monte Carlo. She was a housekeeper.

Moreaugarin was a car mechanic. His face was covered in grease. Every day, Moreaugarin said all sorts

By Tanishka Sharma

She had lived two lives. There was a sea once, and then a man, Elijah, lifting her from her mother’s arms. Her hand had been small in his. Today, it was larger,

By Craig Inanen

You see that electro-mechanical robot sitting over there at the table with Red Morgaine One-Eye’s bunch? Yeah, the rowdy ones who were arm wrestling earlier. That’s Red

By Derek McMillan

The keeper of the shed by the forest met us on the path. She was expecting us because it was midwinter eve. “I lit a fire in the grate and there are plenty of logs

By Shari Hooke

The ocean carries the days away slowly. Paying tithes to the wind, the ship is carried wave by wave towards horizons unknown to me. The long hours drag, and the boredom

By Wes Parish

Rosemary Farrow-Polanski held her little finger out to her little baby, Roman, and waved it in front of his hands. Sure enough, little hands reached up to grasp at her

By Salvatore DiFalco

Maintenance received a call from one of the bio-labs to come and replace a panel of flickering fluorescent lights. They were upsetting the mouse. “The mouse?” I

By Robert W. Caldwell

Delta walked out of the subway train. In her hair she wore a faded flower. Scribbled on the walls of the subway was Isiah said: followed by a few lines of text.

By Charlie Ilett

The thing is blind. It knows where I am. 

It makes a noise like clacking teeth, though its face is smooth as clay. 

I dart behind a tree and

By Sergio Gaut vel Hartman

David Ben Yehuda heard voices, but he was not insane. He had refined that sense to such a degree that he could detect the instant a leaf detached itself from

By João Ventura

He was a professional assassin, recognised as one of the best. His bio in Killers Who’s Who inspired respect.

He took pride in the fact that, throughout

By Scott Reid

It is night and someone left the lights on. I can see the clouds, white as day, their shadows on the ground in front of me. Above the data centres, something out there has